Social Security

The Southern Baptist Convention’s Robert Jeffress, a prominent endorser of Gov. Rick Perry, said in an interview with Janet Mefferd yesterday that the Social Security crisis, the Medicare crisis and the mounting federal deficit are “God’s judgment” for legalized abortion.

Citing a study by the fringe anti-choice group Movement for a Better America, Jeffress claims that legalized abortion is responsible for $35 trillion in lost GDP over the last 35 years.

Listen:

Jeffress: Since Roe v. Wade, we’ve had 40 million babies aborted, murdered. Do you realize that if those children, one study I cite in the books says, if those children had been allowed to live, if they had grown up and become productive citizens, it would have added $35 trillion to our Gross National Product in the last 35 years, and there would be no Social Security crisis or Medicare crisis because those people would be paying, productive citizens into the system.

You know, we’ve got even conservatives, Janet, in the Republican Party who are saying, “Oh, this is the year where we’re interested in the economy and not in social issues.” Listen, there is a connection between social issues and economic issues. You cannot wipe out 20 percent of your population, like we have done as a nation through abortion, without great economic repercussions, which I think are God’s judgment. I think the mounting deficit, the Social Security crisis, all those things are part of God’s judgment because we have murdered 20 percent of our population.

Family Research Council senior fellow Peter Sprigg appeared today on The Matt Friedeman Show on the American Family Association’s American Family Radio to discuss the budding controversy over the right-wing “charity” service CGBG. The progressive groups AllOut.org and Change.org have persuaded over 200 retailers to leave the CGBG, a for-profit group that allows customers to shop at companies online and direct part of their proceeds to right-wing organizations like FRC and Focus on the Family – success that, unsurprisingly, has got the Religious Right up in arms.

Sprigg: People are afraid of the homosexual activists and they’re particularly afraid of this character assassination that comes in the form of the word ‘hate.’ Nobody wants to be accused of participating in ‘hate’ and so throwing that word ‘hate’ around becomes a trump card even when nothing that we have done can reasonably be called ‘hate.’ On the contrary, everything we do is motivated by love for the people who are hurt by this lifestyle.

Friedeman: Well, again I think what Tony Perkins has done and Peter Sprigg you by extension, you just say, we’re asking people, and AFA does this all the time as well, you urge retailers to remain neutral in the culture wars, the current cultural battles, particularly when you come down to something like homosexuality.

As it turns out, not only is the Democratic Party controlled by such spirits, but the Republican Party is as well. But whereas the Democrats are controled by "Jezebel" via a "network of demonic principalities that demanded allegiance, worship, and the shedding of innocent blood," the Republicans are controlled by "Ahab" which makes GOP leaders passive and yield to intimidation instead of standing up on Godly principles.

In fact, Patterson explains in her book how it was this very spirit of passivity that caused prayer to be removed in school, which resulted in the murder to President Kennedy:

Passivity caused the court cases that removed prayer from our public schools to remain, causing the protective wall around the United States, our schools and our government to crumble. The very next year President John Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas. The country mourned but the protective walls were not restored.

Patterson warns that "the further you get up the ladder in Washington, D. C. or state government, the harder it is to withstand the power of the Ahab structure if you’re a Republican" ... which is why President George W. Bush did so many ungodly things, like appointing "an open homosexual to high office," meeting with Muslims, and failing to pass a federal marriage amendment:

Although the Republican Party Platform is full of virtue, many individual Republicans tolerate what the platform does not. Take former evangelical President George W. Bush. Here are just a few of his actions that align with King Ahab’s tolerance of Jezebel.

• He was the first Republican President to appoint an open homosexual to high office— Scott Evertz to the White House Office of National AIDS Policy.

• After the Islamic terrorist attack on the Twin Towers on 9/11/2001, President Bush invited 50 ambassadors from Muslim countries for a traditional meal and prayer at the White House in November 2001 to mark the start of Ramadan. A Republican President was the first to invite Muslims to pray in the White House. President Barack Obama continued the celebration of Ramadan in the White House, but it was started by a Republican President.

• President and Mrs. Bush bowed before the Meiji Shrine in Tokyo.

• President Bush “removed his shoes, entered a mosque and praised Islam for inspiring ‘countless individuals to lead lives of honesty, integrity and morality.’ For the second time since the September 11 terrorist attacks, the president yesterday visited Washington’s oldest mosque, the Islamic Center, where Muslims from 75 nations gather to worship. Bush marked the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan by praising Islam as a hopeful religion of mercy and tolerance.”

• President Bush outraged evangelicals by stating that he believes that Christians and Muslims worship the same god.

• In 2004 President Bush campaigned in favor of a Marriage Amendment to the U.S. Constitution that says that marriage is between one man and one woman. However, when he was elected, he said no more about it. If he had put as much importance on it as he did in reforming Social Security, the Marriage Amendment would have passed through Congress. He even said on several occasions that he supported civil unions, which give the same rights as marriage to same-sex couples.

After warning that marriage equality in New York will hasten the coming of the Antichrist, Renew America’s Michael Bresciani claims that Satan is behind the LGBT-rights movement and using demons to spread lies that will turn people away from God. “In our world most of those spreading the gay lie are liberals, activists, spineless academicians, Hollywood sellouts, and now we can throw in a president and a large contingent of fully duped politicians,” Bresciani writes, adding, “There is little doubt that the entire gay and lesbian community is guided by a powerful demon spirit who is subordinate to Satan.” He claims that at the center Satan’s lie is that people are born gay:

The work of the devil throughout the centuries has kept pace with the so called enlightenment of man. He has not tried to lay ideas on us collectively until we were well prepped to receive them. I'll skip all the increments in between and pull you into the present. In the last days before the second coming of Christ the bible says demons are released in great numbers all over the earth. Their work is to prepare people who have already decided that God must have been wrong about a lot of stuff, to get ready to receive the, lawless one, otherwise known as the antichrist.

The lies will be disseminated by the willing propagandists that first believe the gobbledygook themselves. In our world most of those spreading the gay lie are liberals, activists, spineless academicians, Hollywood sellouts, and now we can throw in a president and a large contingent of fully duped politicians.

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The greatest of them place rulers into place and guide nations and kingdoms while the lower level minions cover everything else in the realm of lust, greed, violence and perversion along with a few dozen other areas too many to mention. There is little doubt that the entire gay and lesbian community is guided by a powerful demon spirit who is subordinate to Satan.

One of the easiest ways to determine if a new trend is a lie of the father of lies is to compare it to what God has said. If it is off center, subtly askew or slightly perverted it is probably wrong. In the case of being gay, or even worse, being born gay, that lie is directly opposite of God's word.

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Unlike the lie that alcoholism is a disease, this lie of Satan may endure until the second coming because it is part of what precipitates the final judgment over a lawless and reprobate world. In the absence of the magic alcoholic's gene that no one ever found, and the need to curb spending alcoholics were bounced off social security disability benefits all at once years ago. Gays are not drawing benefits for being gay but are yet clamoring for same sex civil unions and gay marriage benefits for their so called spouses.

The most damning aspect of Satan's lies about being born gay is that it reveals who the source of the lie is, and at the same time identifies the believers of the lies, as his very own children.

Friday’s Washington Post features a story about a battle within the conservative movement. Hard-right figures like Sen. Tom Coburn and Grover “drown the government in the bathtub” Norquist are fighting among themselves about which is more important: reducing the deficit or sticking to Norquist’s “no new taxes” pledge, which many Republicans have signed in recent years.

The same question played out at last weekend’s “Awakening” conference, sponsored by the Freedom Federation at Liberty University. In a Saturday panel moderated by Tim Phillips, president of the Koch-funded Tea Party astroturfing group Americans for Prosperity, Norquist urged participants not to focus on the size of the deficit, but the size of government.

Being told not to focus on the size of the deficit was a bit stunning given that a major theme of the conference had been that the growing national debt was an evil, immoral force. In fact, the night before Norquist’s panel, participants were told that the national debt was on the verge of destroying civilization as we know it. Former Reagan administration official Marc Nuttle, now on the board of the dominionist Oak Initiative, gave a gloom-and-doom-and-more-doom analysis of the mounting national debt. Nuttle’s thesis is that we could be less than two years from hitting a catastrophic debt wall, where interest rates rise and we can’t keep up payments, the U.S. fails, and with it freedom, and the world collapses into 1,000 years of darkness.

Nuttle had given essentially the same analysis in an interviewwith “apostles” Cindy and Rick Jacobs a few weeks earlier. But in that interview, Nuttle also presented the outline of his suggested plan for averting catastrophe. The dire threat required a spirit of shared sacrifice, he said, and the “Nuttle plan,” as he described it then, called for extraordinary temporary measures, including four years of sales taxes and taxes on the rich along with means-testing social security.

I had been surprised at parts of Nuttle’s proposal, and expected some sparks to fly when I saw he was appearing on the Norquist panel. But under the gaze of Phillips and Norquist, Nuttle choked. His presentation painted the same frightening picture that he had described the night before, but did not talk about the kind of tax-inclusive shared sacrifice he had described in his interview with Cindy and Rick Jacobs. So during the Q&A I asked him whether there wasn’t some disagreement on the panel between his and Norquist’s visions.

Nuttle was clearly uncomfortable and apparently unwilling to stand up to Norquist on the tax question, so he declared “I don’t want to raise taxes” and suggested the government could survive on 20 percent of what it now spends. When asked about his earlier interview, he suggested that he was talking about the fact that after the nation hit the wall and we were in crisis, we would be forced to take drastic measures to help the nation survive.

But wouldn’t you want to make a shared sacrifice to prevent disaster rather than during the aftermath? It seems quite clear in Nuttle’s interview with the Jacobs that his call for shared sacrifice and temporary taxes was to help prevent the U.S. from hitting the “wall” by dealing with the deficit while we still had a chance to get it under control. But his unwillingness to say so while seated next to Norquist demonstrates the same kind of uncomfortable position Republican lawmakers are in. Under pressure from Norquist, they’ve been making easy “no new taxes” pledges for years. But this year, many Republicans were swept into power by Tea Partiers’ fears that the debt was destroying their children’s and grandchildren’s future and their urgent desire to reduce federal deficits. And it's not so easy to reconcile the two. Welcome to governing.

Rick Santorum on a radio interview today claimed that legalized abortion is the reason that the Social Security system will begin paying out more in benefits than it brings in. Santorum won’t be the first Religious Right leader to blame economic problems on a woman’s right to choose, as Rep. Mike Pence (R-IN) and Jim Garlow both tied legal abortion to unemployment. Speaking to the New Hampshire radio station WEZS, Santorum discussed how the “abortion culture” is harming the Social Security system, which he called “a flawed design.”

Agreeing with a questioner, Santorum said that “the reason Social Security is in trouble is because we don’t have enough workers to support the retirees, well, a third of all the young people in America are not in America today because of abortion, because one in three pregnancies end in abortion, so we are depopulating this country.” Pointing to the birthrate in Europe, Santorum went on to say that “these demographic trends are causing Social Security and Medicare to be underfunded.”

The Family Research Council released a pamphlet authored by senior fellow Peter Sprigg about the purported “harm” of marriage equality to American society. Sprigg, who previously said that he wants to “export homosexuals from the United States” because “homosexuality is destructive to society,” discusses the ten reasons he believes that equal rights for gays and lesbians are dangerous, ranging from a “diversity bag” in a Massachusetts school (Reason #2) to the predicted rise of adultery if gays were allowed to marry (Reason #5) and the legalization of polygamy (Reason #10).

First, Sprigg argues that if married gay couples receive health benefits for their families, their relationships would be “subsidized” by the public through entitlement programs. Sprigg finds it deplorable that people would like their spouse or child to receive benefits after they pass away:

Reason #1: Taxpayers, consumers, and businesses would be forced to subsidize homosexual relationships.

One of the key arguments often heard in support of homosexual civil “marriage” revolves around all the government “benefits” that homosexu¬als claim they are denied. Many of these “benefits” involve one thing—taxpayer money that homosexuals are eager to get their hands on. For example, one of the goals of homosexu¬al activists is to take part in the biggest government entitlement program of all—Social Security. Homosexuals want their partners to be eligible for Social Security survivors benefits when one partner dies.

The fact that Social Security survivors benefits were intended to help stay-at-home mothers who did not have retirement benefits from a former employer has not kept homosexuals from de¬manding the benefit.1 Homosexual activists are also demanding that children raised by a homo¬sexual couple be eligible for benefits when one of the partners dies—even if the deceased partner was not the child’s biological or adoptive parent.

Later, Sprigg claims that if gays and lesbians have equal marriage rights, then straight people would be less likely to marry. Why? According to Sprigg, few gay couples would get married if they had the right to, and straight couples would naturally follow their “poor example” and not get married:

Reason #4: Fewer people would marry.

Even where legal recognition and marital rights and benefits are available to same-sex couples (whether through same-sex civil “marriages,” “civil unions,” or “domestic partnerships”), relatively few same-sex couples even bother to seek such recognition or claim such benefits.

…

Couples who could marry, but choose instead to cohabit without the benefit of marriage, harm the institution of marriage by setting an example for other couples, making non-marital cohabitation seem more acceptable as well. If same-sex “marriage” were legalized, the evidence suggests that the percentage of homosexual couples who would choose cohabitation over “marriage” would be much larger than the current percentage of heterosexual couples who choose cohabitation over marriage. It is likely that the poor example set by homosexual couples would, over time, lead to lower marriage rates among heterosexuals as well.

Sprigg also blames marriage equality laws for a fall in the birthrate in certain states, arguing that people would have fewer children if gay couples are allowed to wed. Of course, he uses absolutely no evidence to back up this assertion:

Reason #9: Birthrates would fall.

There is already evidence of at least a correlation between low birth rates and the legalization of same-sex “marriage.” At this writing, five U.S. states grant marriage licenses to same-sex couples. As of 2007, the last year for which complete data are available, four of those five states ranked within the bottom eight out of all fifty states in both birth rate (measured in relation to the total population) and fertility rate (measured in rela¬tion to the population of women of childbearing age).

…

The contribution of same-sex “marriage” to de¬clining birth rates would clearly lead to significant harm for society.

Early risers got a chance to start the second day at CPAC by quaffing champagne mimosas and rubbing shoulders with a group of freshman GOP representatives. The reception was hosted by the Texas-based Institute for Policy Innovation, a think tank founded in the 1980s by Dick Armey and dedicated to “Advocating lower taxes, fewer regulations, and a smaller, less-intrusive government.” Greeting the mimosa drinkers was IPI President Tom Giovanetti, who once complained that Republicans “blew it” in the 1990s when they got a congressional majority and failed to fire all the Keynesians from the Congressional Budget Office.

But I digress. The CPAC reception featured several GOP freshmen who took turns talking about why they ran for office. Most said they ran to secure America on behalf of their children and/or grandchildren; two had personal beefs with the Obama about family car dealerships that were lost when GM was reorganized as part of the federal bailout.

Not surprisingly, each of the members praised National Republican Campaign Committee chair Pete Sessions for overseeing the big GOP gains in the House. Sessions’ remarks were notable primarily for what may be the single least inspiring evocation of “American exceptionalism” ever uttered: “an idea and a thought process that we need to buy into.”

Early risers got a chance to start the second day at CPAC by quaffing champagne mimosas and rubbing shoulders with a group of freshman GOP representatives. The reception was hosted by the Texas-based Institute for Policy Innovation, a think tank founded in the 1980s by Dick Armey and dedicated to “Advocating lower taxes, fewer regulations, and a smaller, less-intrusive government.” Greeting the mimosa drinkers was IPI President Tom Giovanetti, who once complained that Republicans “blew it” in the 1990s when they got a congressional majority and failed to fire all the Keynesians from the Congressional Budget Office.

But I digress. The CPAC reception featured several GOP freshmen who took turns talking about why they ran for office. Most said they ran to secure America on behalf of their children and/or grandchildren; two had personal beefs with the Obama about family car dealerships that were lost when GM was reorganized as part of the federal bailout.

Not surprisingly, each of the members praised National Republican Campaign Committee chair Pete Sessions for overseeing the big GOP gains in the House. Sessions’ remarks were notable primarily for what may be the single least inspiring evocation of “American exceptionalism” ever uttered: “an idea and a thought process that we need to buy into.”

Earlier this month, a conservative activist in Texas named Norman E. Adams unveiled a new group called "Texans for Sensible Immigration Policy" that seeks to implement a "sensible" immigration policy that falls somewhere between the draconian laws in Arizona and calls for "amnesty" by requiring ID cards, fines, and a call for "taxes on noncitizens [to be] a minimum 50% higher than Social Security/Medicare for citizens."

The reason Adams supports allowing Hispanics to come and work in this country is because the "combined fertility rate of American born citizens is barely 2%, considered unsustainable ... [because] since Roe v. Wade, we have aborted nearly fifty million children in the United States! This represents multiple generations of American-born workers!"

And Adams' proposal has now received the glowing endorsement of influential ultra-right-wing Texas activist Steven Hotze who explains that he admires people who are willing to break the law to better their lives and would gladly trade native born Americans for "Christian, pro-family, pro-life and pro-free enterprise" Hispanics who will be "our natural allies against the Democrats and Muslims":

I personally like the Hispanic people and their commitment to family and the work ethic. They are also a Christian based culture. I don't blame them for having made it to America by hook or crook. My great great grandfather pealed potatoes on a boat from Germany to get to America and the WASPs did not like him or the other immigrants that came with him. They also did not like the Irish or the Italians.

We had better embrace the Hispanics because they are going to be the dominant culture in Texas in no short order. I hope that Sen. Marco Rubio from Florida is our Republican VP in 2012.

...

It seems to me that there may be nativistic and prejudicial thinking on the immigration issue by many Caucasians.

The argument is that millions of Hispanics broke the law to get here. Which one of you would not have done the same thing had you been in their shoes? I like people who take risks to help their families and are willing to work to better their families' lives. We have a whole lot of American born citizens who I would gladly trade in exchange for hard working Hispanics.

The majority of the Hispanic culture in America is Christian, pro-family, pro-life and pro-free enterprise. Sounds like they would make great Republicans to me. Let's go recruit them!

Gentlemen, it seems that the real problem we face is the Muslim immigration invasion of America. The Hispanics are our natural allies against the Democrats and Muslims.

In 2007, Tom Marino resigned from his position as US Attorney in Pennsylvania after a corruption scandal clouded his career and raised questions about his honesty. Marino had used his official title as US Attorney to provide a reference in 2005 to his “close friend,” convicted felon Louis DeNaples, who was trying to win the state gaming commission’s approval to open slot machines at a resort he owned. When his office began an investigation into DeNaples for lying about his ties to organized crime, Marino's assistants uncovered his reference and notified the Justice Department, which transferred the investigation out of Marino’s office. But questions about Marino’s ties to DeNaples remained.

Defending his actions, Marino said on a local radio show that the Department of Justice gave him permission to be a reference for DeNaples. But the Justice Department says there is “no record of Marino having received the permission” to serve as a reference for DeNaples and that Marino never informed the General Counsel office. Although Marino stands by his claim that he received written permission, he failed to produce any letter from the Department.

When the Justice Department launched an investigation into Marino’s actions, he resigned and promptly took a $250,000-a-year job as “DeNaples’ in-house lawyer.” Marino later under-reported his income on his financial disclosure forms, reporting that he only received $25,000 from DeNaples. Even Zack Oldham of the conservative blog RedState said of Marino’s actions: “The reality is just as bad as–if not worse than–the optics of this scandal.”

The DeNaples affair wasn’t even the first time Marino had run into corruption accusations. When Marino was District Attorney in Lycoming County, he tried to get a friend out of a drug charge by going behind the back of the county judge who had refused to toss out his friend’s conviction. According to the Luzeme County Citizens Voice, Marino “approached another judge and won the expungement, but the plan backfired when the second judge learned of the first judge's involvement in the case.”

Marino continued to struggle with the truth in his campaign for Congress. He criticized his opponent, Rep. Chris Carney, for leaving Washington as an anti-abortion rights bill was being circulated during the health care reform debate. Carney was not in Washington at the time because his wife was undergoing surgery for breast cancer.

He later alleged that Carney “has no problem spending taxpayers’ money for abortions” and that Pennsylvania women were receiving taxpayer-subsidized abortions under the new health care law, even though nonpartisan fact-checkers have confirmed, repeatedly, that the law prohibits taxpayer funding for abortion.

Marino also berated his opponent for refusing to take questions from the press on political matters after Carney, a Navy Reservist, was called for active duty and was barred by law from making “statements to or answer questions from the news media regarding political issues or regarding government policies.”

On the issue of immigration, Marino opposes a pathway for citizenship for illegal immigrants, and touts his endorsement from Americans for Legal Immigration PAC, which has been called a “nativist extremist organization” by the Southern Poverty Law Center. In his Americans for Legal Immigration PAC survey, Marino says he strongly favors Arizona’s severe SB 1070 law, would refuse to support comprehensive immigration reform, and that he would consider impeaching the President over immigration policy.

Marino said he would vote against extending unemployment benefits, maintaining that some of the people on unemployment simply don’t “want to go get work because they are being paid to stay home.” He said that non-senior citizens should face cuts in Social Security benefits if not the elimination of the program altogether, saying: “my generation and probably the generation that follows me, we are going to have to step up to the plate and say, ‘We are not going to get Social Security.’” The 60 Plus Association, a front group for the health care and pharmaceutical industries which supports privatizing Social Security, aired TV ads on Marino’s behalf.

In a radio interview in August, Marino reportedly suggested eliminating the IRS and the Departments of Education and Energy and replacing them with new agencies, saying, “There’s got to be a total revolution there.”

Despite the ethical cloud surrounding Marino, his hard-line conservative views and support from the Radical Right helped him win election to Congress. Watch this segment from an NBC affiliate revealing Marino’s ethical troubles:

Tim Walberg, who is returning to the House next year after representing Michigan's 7th district for one term from 2007-2009, brags that he “was a tea partier before there was a tea party.” Indeed, Walberg enthusiastically embraces the most extreme aspects of the Tea Party—from corporate pandering and vowing to cut social safety-net programs to far-right views on social issues and a predilection for conspiracy theories.

Walberg is perhaps most famous for his unabashed embrace of birtherism. Asked by a radio show caller if he thinks President Obama is an American citizen or a Muslim, Walberg responded:

"You know, I don't know, I really don't know," Walberg responded. "We don't have enough information about this President. He was never given a job interview that was complete."

"But that's not the issue now," Walberg went on. "He is President. Right now, we need to make sure that he doesn't remain as President. Whether he's American, a Muslim, a Christian, you name it."

While other candidates have tried to tiptoe away from their own birther claims, Walberg later doubled down, saying that he would “take [Obama] at his word that he’s an American citizen”…and then suggested that Congress impeach Obama in order to obtain a copy of his birth certificate.

But birtherism isn’t the only right-wing conspiracy theory that Walberg backs. He has repeated the bizarre—and completely debunked—theory that the Chinese are drilling for oil off the coast of Florida. And he continues to repeat discredited ideas about the origins of the Iraq war. He said that Saddam Hussein funded the Al Qaeda terrorists behind the 9/11 attacks, and insisted in a debate last month that Iraq “absolutely” had weapons of mass destruction before the American invasion—something that even George W. Bush now admits is not true.

Walberg backs an extreme pro-corporate economic agenda. When Walberg first won election in 2006, the ultra-conservative Club For Growth counted his victory as its own, bragging that its PAC “scored its first-ever knock-out of an incumbent” when Walberg defeat a moderate incumbent in the Republican primary. The Club for Grouth had poured millions of dollars into Walberg’s 2006 campaign, spending $1 million in the primary, and then producing vicious attack adds against his Democratic opponent in the general election. This year, American Future Fund, an especially shadowy group with ties to Big Agriculture, spent over $500,000 to run an ad attacking Walberg’s opponent with false claims about health care reform and clean energy legislation.

And, it seems, Walberg’s big business backers will get what they paid for. The League of Conservation Voters named him to their 2010 Dirty Dozen, the second time he had made that list. During his one previous term in Congress, LCV said, “Walberg opposed every major clean energy reform…earning a 0% LCV score.” LCV continued, “During his two years in office, he was on the wrong side of conservation and clean energy on 32 out of 33 votes. He even voted against the No Child Left Inside Act, designed to help educate children about the natural environment.” Indeed, no clean energy effort is too small to earn Walberg’s disdain: on the campaign trail, he slammed Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm for riding her bicycle to work.

Walberg wants to dramatically cut social safety net programs, and directs much of his scorn on Social Security. He’s advocated for privatizing the program, and agreed with a supporter at a Tea Party event who said Social Security is unconstitutional and “a Ponzi scheme.” In 2006, he called Social Security “socialism at its finest,” adding, “That’s defined as socialism when the government is required to take care of us all.”

Walberg’s Religious Right credentials are also stellar. He opposes abortion rights, including in cases of rape or incest. As a member of the House, he cosponsored two bills that, according to NARAL, “would end all legal abortion, most common forms of birth control, stem cell research, and in vitro fertilization". He voted against a bill that would have provided for stem cell research.

In 2008, Walberg was the only member of the House education committee to vote “no” on extending funding for the Head Start program. He objected to a provision in the bill that prohibited Head Start preschools from discriminating based on religion, warning that a Christian parochial school might have to hire a Muslim or “a Wiccan from a coven in Ann Arbor.”

In the House, Walberg voted against the Employment Non-Discrimination Act and against expanding hate crimes legislation to include gender identity and sexual orientation, and against the Employment Non-Discrimination Act. He also opposed equal pay legislation and the 2008 Paycheck Fairness Act.

Although Ike Skelton, the long-time representative in Missouri’s fourth congressional district, was far from a supporter of LGBT equality, Vicky Hartzler, who defeated him in this year’s election, has based her political career on supporting discrimination against gays and lesbians.

A former state legislator, she was the spokeswoman and public face of the Coalition to Protect Marriage in Missouri, which successfully amended the state constitution to include a ban same-sex marriage (which was already banned by statute) in 2004. The New York Timeswrites that her group used “church functions, yard signs and a ‘marriage chain’ of rallies across the state,” and Hartzler “said she hoped that the outcome would send a loud message to the rest of the country: ‘Here in the heartland we have a heart for families, and this is how deeply we feel about marriage.’”

Mother Jonesasked if Hartzler was the “most anti-gay candidate in America” since she believes that repealing Don’t Ask Don’t Tell will “put us at risk,” maintains that sexual orientation is a choice and therefore gay people aren’t entitled to civil rights, and dubbed hate crimes legislation one of the “the extreme agenda items of the gay movement.”

Paul Guequierre of the Human Rights Campaign told Mother Jones that while “Ike Skelton has not been a friend of the LGBT community,” unlike Hartzler, “he does not wake up in the morning thinking about what he can do to harm the LGBT community.”

A staunch anti-choice activist, Hartzler supported legislation which “would have allowed for prosecutors to charge women who obtained late-term abortions with murder” and “also have permitted second-degree murder charges to be filed against doctors who performed such procedures.” She was also the chief sponsor of a bill that would pressure women seeking an abortion to view their sonograms. Throughout her career in the State House, she consistently received perfect ratings from the right-wing Missouri Family Network.

In a profile by the American Family Association, Hartzler said that she found inspiration from God to run for public office at the age of nine, and her book maintains that “Christians must become more active in politics if they are to have the impact God calls them to have.” Hartzler said that her book provides Christian candidates with “the tools and inspiration they need to bring God’s light in a darkening world.”

According to one sympathetic review in a local newspaper, Hartzler’s book “praises Absalom — a rebellious son of King David, God’s anointed leader for Israel and according to Christian theology an early example of divinely ordained rule prefiguring that of Jesus Christ — as being the “first politician” and an example for modern political leaders. In Hartzler’s words, ‘Absalom won over the hearts of the people of Israel using time-tested campaign strategies. We, too, can campaign successfully following these same guidelines.’”

A climate change denier, Hartzler asserted that she does not believe in climate change since she read “some articles that [said] it’s actually decreasing, that we have climates getting colder…and certainly, I don’t believe that if there is a climate change that man has a very significant role in that.”

Hartzler ran an ugly anti-immigrant ad against Ike Skelton, where she claimed that by voting to reauthorize the Children’s Health Insurance Program he supports “welfare benefits” for “illegal immigrants”, and criticized him for opposing a measure that would prohibit illegal immigrants from attending public schools as “giving illegal immigrants free education.”

She appealed to Tea Partiers by slamming government spending, as she blasted Congress’s spending plans and said that “we just want the government to leave us alone here in Missouri’s 4th.” However, according to the Kansas City Star, Hartzler’s “farm has received $774,325 in federal subsidies from 1995 to 2009.” She defended the government farm subsidies as a “national defense issue,” and claimed that she would not support cuts to Social Security, Medicare, or defense.

In an editorial board interview she couldn’t name any programs she would cut funding to other than “the Lady Bird Highway Beautification projects. She indicated that garden clubs could do some of this work along the highways, saving public funds.”

However, Hartzler does appear to support spending money to expand the role of the Navy in Missouri, as she argued that under Skelton’s watch the landlocked state has “the smallest Navy here that we have had since the early 1960s.”

Hartzler blended her Tea Party lip service and Religious Right advocacy to topple one of the most powerful members of the House, and will now bring her years of anti-equality and anti-choice activism to become a prominent voice of the Far-Right in the GOP-led House.

As a legislator and candidate Sandy Adams has embraced the agenda of the Religious Right. Adams voted to enact burdensome waiting periods and tougher parental notice laws for young women seeking abortions, and voted in favor of forcing women to have ultrasound tests before terminating their pregnancy, which the Governor ultimately vetoed for placing “an inappropriate burden on women seeking to terminate a pregnancy.” During the GOP primary she was endorsed by militantly anti-choice groups such as the Republican National Coalition for Life and the American Conservative Union. Moreover, she is on-record opposing stem-cell research and boasts that she “fought against this type of research funding in the Florida House of Representatives.”

She is also an avowed opponent of teaching evolution, and voted in favor of a bill that calls on teachers to “teach theories that contradict the theory of evolution.” Adams herself does not believe evolution and says that Christians should reject evolution in favor of “the biblical terms of how we came about.” When asked “by a caller in a telephone town hall meeting whether she believed in evolution…Adams replied, ‘I’m Christian. What else do you want to know?’” Adams also supports Florida’s unsuccessful private school vouchers program and wants the Ten Commandments to be displayed in public schools.

Like Sharron Angle, Sandy Adams floats the baseless conspiracy theory that Islamic, or Sharia, law is thriving in Muslim communities in Michigan and in danger of spreading throughout Michigan and the United States:

The Muslim extremist project is to create pockets and to grow their Muslim extreme philosophies, and if you look at some of our towns within our own borders, like Michigan, Michigan has cities that have a lot of Muslim influence and even so much as I would say some extremist Muslim influence because they are trying to operate under Sharia law, not American law. And I believe that we need to continue to operate under our Constitutional laws and the laws of our country and our state and we should not be under any other form of the law.

Sarah Palin endorsed Sandy Adams, and Adams claims that she “can’t wait to join the Tea Party Caucus” and said that “I believe what Michele Bachmann is doing is the right thing to do and I will be part of that Caucus, I can assure you of that.”

She has embraced anti-government extremism, and wants to radically alter the Constitution by repealing the 16th and 17th Amendments, which would eliminate the progressive income tax and the right of voters to elect their US Senators, respectively. Adams believes that instead of voters, state legislators like herself should pick the state’s Senators. Adams also wants to abolish the Department of Education, said that the Departments of Energy and Interior Departments should be “completely dismantled” because they are “not allowed by our Constitution,” and strongly opposes Wall Street Reform. She wouldn’t “vouch for the constitutionality of the federal Clean Water and Clean Air acts without reading them,” writes the Orlando Sentinel, “yet she’s all for big government when it comes to NASA.,” which is based in her district.

Furthermore, she backs Republican Rep. Paul Ryan’s “Roadmap for America,” which calls for the privatization of Social Security and Medicare. According to Florida Today, Adams “wants to cut government spending, but couldn’t cite one area to cut; wants to repeal health care reform, but offered no alternative; and is willing to look at privatizing Medicare, something that should alarm seniors.” Adams was also the chief sponsor of a state constitutional amendment that would stop Florida from cooperating with the recently passed health care reform law by barring mandatory insurance coverage.

Adams is also ardently opposed to immigrant rights and touts the endorsement of Americans for Legal Immigration, which has been classified as a “nativist extremist organization” by the Southern Poverty Law Center. The group is “allied with various Minuteman factions” and according to the SPLC, the group says that its “‘rallying cry is: Illegals Go Home!’” While serving in the State House, Adams was one of just fourteen members to vote against allowing undocumented children to receive healthcare through Florida KidCare.

On the environment, Adams supports offshore oil drilling off Florida’s coast and tried to censure the Governor for attempting to pass a constitutional amendment to prohibit such drilling.

A steadfast and longtime advocate of the Religious Right and anti-government extremism, Sandy Adams plans to be a bridge between Christian conservatives and Tea Party reactionaries in addition to a stalwart ally of Michele Bachmann in the House.

A group called America’s PAC has raised almost $1 million to run highly inflammatory radio ads targeting African American voters, urging them to vote Republican in November, according to the New York Sun.

One ad, called “Don’t Go There,” features an exchange between two men. The first man says the second man has no reason to vote Republican because he is unemployed, an adulterer, and won’t serve in the military, and finally he comes to abortion:

Michael: And if you make a little mistake with one of your ho’s, you’ll want to dispose of that problem toot sweet, no questions asked, right?

Dennis: Naw, that’s too cold. I don’t snuff my own seed …

Michael: Huh. Really? (pause) Well, maybe you do have a reason to vote Republican!

Another ad on abortion accuses the “Democrat Party” of “decimating our people” by supporting abortion laws. Over the sound of a thunderstorm and a crying baby, a woman says, “Democrats say they want our votes. Why don’t they want our lives?”

In another ad, “Hazardous Dukes,” the “Michael” character says David Duke visited Syria to support terrorists in Iraq. The speaker continues,

Now, I can understand why a Ku Klux Klan cracker like David Duke makes nice with the terrorists. They fight voting rights in Iraq, just like he does back home. But what I want to know is why so many of the Democrat politicians I helped elect are on the same side of the Iraq war as David Duke.

Duke, the founder of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, was a Republican state representative in Louisiana and ran for governor as a Republican.

Other ads blame Democrats for Hurricane Katrina and voting irregularities in Florida in 2000, call Social Security “the most discriminatory government program we have,” invoke Martin Luther King, and assert that “it’s only the Republicans who support our troops.”